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Dongtae
Dongtae is the male protagonist of Dice. He starts off as a timid kid with bottom of the barrel rankings on every aspect of his life. Whether it be looks, intelligence, height, it was like Dongtae rolled "ones" for all of his attributes. Constantly bullied and incapable of approaching his crush Eunju, Dongtae is rescued from a spiral of despair by becoming a Dicer. Appearance Prior to becoming a dicer Dongtae is rather short and scrawny with a sad/depressed look on his face. He has freckles and very vivid dark circles under his eyes. With all the characteristics of the classic "wimp" he is an easy target for all the bullies in his class. After becoming a Dicer, Dongtae invests many points on his physical attributes and becomes a tall, handsome, athletic young man with great dexterity and nimbleness. The freckles are the first to go, but he retains his "panda eyes", although less prominent, as his trademark as a character in this series. History Flashbacks indicate that at least since middle school Dongtae had been the target of bullying and a victim of low self-esteem. He lives with his alcoholic mother and spends most of the day alone. The only person in class who treated him with sympathy and was unconcerned with his physical appearance was the most popular girl in the school, Eunju, who is depicted as his polar opposite: clever, beautiful and accomplished in all respects. As the story begins, Dongtae is in secondary school and bullying has evolved to outright servitude to the class leaders. He does his best to hide his suffering from Eunju, as well as his feelings towards her, and is ecstactic just to find out that she remembers his name. When Taebin, the transfer student, arrives at his class and becomes an instant celebrity due to his top-class looks, physical prowess and intelligence, Dongtae becomes silently jealous, which is enhanced by the visible attraction Eunju feels for him. Things come to a head when he decides to stalk Taebin in order to expose him as an impostor and keep Eunju from him. While stalking Taebin, Dongtae is noticed by X, who sends a Die to the place where he is hidden. After a brief struggle with Taebin for it, Dongtae activates the Die and thus becomes a Dicer. Initially, he has misgivings about it, but his desire to conquer Eunju motivates him to use the Die points and accept X's quests. He returns to school with much improved looks, and quickly leaves his life as a bread shuttle for the bullies behind for much increased popularity. It is too late to win Eunju, though: by the time she meets him, Taebin is her boyfriend already. After receiving a morally dubious task from X and feeling bad about fulfilling it, Dongtae decides to keep improving himself, but to refrain from accepting quests that involve hurting other people. In the meantime, he keeps looking for a chance with Eunju. Things remain more or less normal until Dongtae decides to help his acquaintance Byungchul, with whom he had shared some misery in the past and who has become the new preferential target of bullying after Dongtae became a Dicer. After saving Byungchul from aggression by nondescript bullies, Dongtae gives him a Die. Things don't turn out as Dongtae expected. Instead of using Dice just to improve his physical looks and evade bullying, Byungchul becomes violent and being cleverer than Dongtae, he finds a way monstrously to increase the strength of just one arm, and ends up gravely injuring one of his bullies. Dongtae is left to ponder the inherent dangers of Dice, but never questions their usefulness. Later, Byungchul is tricked by X and dies while scattering Dice all over the floor in the school. They are picked by students and soon many Dicers appear. Not as scrupulous as Dongtae, they pursue whatever quest X gives them and in the end, Dongtae has to save Eunju from a mass quest when X targets her. By accomplishing that, Dongtae receives a golden die and attains A ranker status like Taebin. Using his new Time Pause power, he saves Eunju again and decides to form his own Dicer guild in order to protect her and keep Dicers on line. Still coming to terms with the fact that he won't be able to get closer to Eunju as a guild leader, since Eunju refuses to use Dice, Dongtae is approached by Mio, a Dicer girl who heavily improved herself and has a crush on him. She tells him the idea of the guild is utopian in her opinion. Later, he realises that he is not receiving any new quests, and finds out that the same applies to Taebin. When the B rankers start to fight each other over a mass quest, the two and Mio discuss the implications, and it's at that point that Dongtae reaches the same conclusion Taebin had formulated earlier: Dice production is filled by Dicers' desires, and since Dongtae and Taebin had attained contentment after improving themselves, they didn't have the necessary craving to generate Dice. Abilities As a Dicer, Dongtae has become clever enough to earn high grades in school, and strong enough to hold his own against bullies attacking Byungchul, but the physical ability he chose to emphasise initially is dexterity, which he has taken to the human limit. As such, Dongtae can run so fast as to be able to climb walls. As for sensorial skills, he has increased his ability to see in the dark to the point of effectively developing night vision. As an A ranker, Dongtae is able to stop time using Die points (one point for ten seconds). When he does it, everything except him and X stops until he decides so, but he can release anything by touching it. Personality Dongtae is so far the only unequivocally moral Dicer. He becomes ashamed of himself for telling a minor lie early on while pursuing a quest and decides only to accept quests that don't involve harming people. Most of the time, he is shown playing pranks and doing chores to obtain Dice. Despite becoming popular, handsome and strong, Dongtae remains gentle and honest, and deplores Taebin's readiness to play with people's emotions in pursuit of Dice. He feels guilty for Byungchul's death. He originally envisaged Dice as a way to become strong in order to help people and get Eunju to acknowledge him. He still retains personality traits from when he was a bread shuttle and is very shy towards girls. But he can be forceful and command obedience from his classmates as a Dicer, and quickly convinces people to join his guild. Like Taebin, Dongtae's desires did not spiral out of control upon having become a Dicer. Once he became satisfied with himself, he stopped receiving new quests for that reason. Relationships 'X -' Dongtae and X seem to get along decently, and X keeps giving him quests even when his other friend Dicers complain they are not getting many. They are shown talking to each other a lot more than needed for the issuing of quests, and Dongtae has even pulled X's leg. He is thankful to Dice - and by extension to X - for the opportunity to break away from his life as the classroom loser. This makes him somewhat averse to condemning X for the consequences of using Dice: he does not blame X directly for causing Byungchul's death and is still in talking terms with him even after he targets Eunju. If anything, he considers X nosy for barging in when he wants to keep to himself. 'Eunju -' probably the most complex relationship in the series. Dongtae is profoundly devoted to Eunju and will go to any lengths to protect her. He considers her the most beautiful girl in the school and its best soul. This has developed into a serious crush, but Dongtae is respectful of Eunju's feelings and hides his love for her after she starts dating Taebin. He went to the extent of sacrificing any chances with her by declaring himself a Dicer and creating a guild to protect non-dicers with her in mind. That did not work very well: while she initially kept her distance and he did his best not to think of her, it took only a request for conversation and an apology from Eunju for him to be again head over heels for her. He was mortified that Eunju thought he might have saved her just because of a quest from X, but he didn't hold it against her and accepted her apology immediately. In the long run, his intention is to show to Eunju that Dice are not necessarily a bad thing. 'Taebin -' the two first A rankers in the school are in polite mutual understanding. Dongtae is jealous of Taebin because the latter is Eunju's boyfriend, but he began to respect his rival when the two allied to protect Eunju from a mass quest given by X with her as a target. And while he condemns Taebin's initial readiness to play with Eunju's feelings in exchange of Dice, he seems to acknowledge that Taebin has grown genuinely to care for her. And because Taebin is the veteran Dicer, Dongtae and he sometimes are seen talking about Dicership and its consequences. 'Mio -' Dongtae is initially intimidated by Mio's straightforwardness, but does not repel her advances. He returns her frankness with frankness and the two seem to be evolving at least into good friends, while Mio clearly has designs on him. 'Byungchul -' originally the closest thing Dongtae had to a friend. They were not seen hanging out early on in the story, and Byungchul seemed to lie low while Dongtae was being bullied because he was the target of sporadic bullying as well. But they used to send each other text messages and enjoy a degree of mutual esteem. After Byungchul became a Dicer and progressively more unhinged, Dongtae felt guilty, but Byungchul trusted him and supplied him with information on X. His death came as a heavy shock to Dongtae. It was also Byungchul who pointed out, to Dongtae, shortly before dying, that they are pawns in X's hands. Category:Dicer